


hold me closer (don't let go)

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [9]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Background Poly, Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Flashbacks, Huddling For Warmth, Light Angst, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28202190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: A study in the sleeping habits of Adora and Catra, both separately and together.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956031
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47
Collections: Ladies Bingo 2020





	hold me closer (don't let go)

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'compare and contrast' square on my [Ladies Bingo 2020](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org/) bingo card!
> 
> once again, thanks to my partner for editing! any remaining typos are all mine.

****

**here.**

Adora is exhausted. 

The last few days have been nothing less than a whirlwind, and after being bombarded with so much information contradictory to the tenets she’s been taught to uphold since childhood, her brain aches. Her body isn’t much better – she’s had a headache lingering at her temples for most of the day, and her back is sore. As much as part of her wants to explore Bright Moon further, catalogue more details about how the place is utterly unlike what she expected, a far larger part of her just wants to get some _rest_. 

But no matter what she does, no matter how many times she tosses and turns or flips from one end of the bed to the other, no matter how long she stays in one spot with her eyes closed trying to trick herself into drifting off, her brain refuses to shut down.

Huffing out a frustrated sigh, she turns onto her stomach and stretches out an arm until her hand is dangling over the empty space past the edge of the bed. After only a second, she draws it back so that it’s safely resting on the mattress. As long as she doesn’t look around for too long, it’s easy to forget that she’s several feet above the ground, suspended from the ceiling. However, if she thinks about it for too long, even though she isn’t really afraid of heights, the knowledge makes her stomach flip. 

While the room itself is fairly dim, outside the windows, lights built into the castle walls let off a faint, warm glow, keeping her from being plunged into utter darkness. It’s quiet too; sometimes, she can hear footsteps as someone passes by the door, maybe a quick snippet of conversation, but other than that, it’s peaceful. There’s no clanking or creaking, no snoring, no bitten-off screams wafting from a distant part of the Horde’s headquarters. 

She knows that, objectively, she should be grateful for the room, grateful that she hasn’t been thrown into a prison cell. She should be grateful for the _bed_. It’s incredibly cushy; flopping down on the mattress had felt like sinking into a sponge, and there are pillows everywhere, ranging in size from full body length to tiny things barely larger than her hand. The curtains hanging down around the bed are made of a soft, gauzy material that makes her shiver pleasantly when she brushes her fingertips against them. It’s wide enough for three people, and the whole thing smells faintly floral, like a breeze on a warm spring day. The mattress dips down in the middle, forming a small depression, and she imagines that most people in her situation, surrounded by pillows and covered up by a heavy blanket, would feel safe. 

She should be grateful for the comfort. She should be grateful that, for the first time in her entire life, she doesn’t have to share a room with a batch of fellow recruits. She’s actually _alone_. 

But she misses her bed. 

Sure, it was nothing more than a cot. And while the canvas had been sturdy, it hadn’t been _comfortable_. It had also been incredibly colorless – rather than pink and lavender and gold, everything about her bed had been beige and gray. Their blankets had been just heavy enough to ward away the worst of the chills that emanated from the metal walls of the room, but they didn’t make Adora feel _warm._ She never had the space to herself. Even in the middle of the night, she could always hear someone breathing steadily, hear their cots rustling as they shifted in their sleep, hear their footsteps padding on the floor as they slipped away to go to the bathroom. 

But, despite all of its issues, her bedroom at the Horde had something that Bright Moon doesn’t, something that she can’t ask for. 

The Horde had Catra. 

She doesn’t remember when they started sharing a bed; even when she combs through her earliest memories, looks back at when they were kids that were still unsteady on their feet, Catra was there. While she always officially had her own bed, Catra slept in it no more than a dozen times, on nights where she was too sick or too angry at Adora to join her.

But other than those exceptions, from the time they were children to the day that Adora slipped away, Catra was always with her at night. She preferred to stay at the end of the bed, curled up in a tight ball near Adora’s feet, often with one hand resting on Adora’s calf. On the nights where the chill in the air was too much to bear, Catra would slip under the blanket and join her, and Adora always found herself nodding off within moments, lured to sleep by the soft, steady rhythm of Catra’s breathing, enveloped by the warm heat emanating from her body. Even on the nights where the two of them didn’t fall asleep immediately, on the nights where they weren’t exhausted and bruised from a long day of training, a few minutes of softly talking to Catra always did the trick. The same held true for the times when they weren’t at headquarters, when they were off in the forest on a training exercise or visiting one of the more remote Horde outposts scattered across Etheria. It didn’t matter if they were on the ground, with only a thin sleeping bag between them and tree roots and rocks, or if they were tucked between two crates in the back of a shuttle slowly trundling its way through hostile terrain. As long as Catra was with her, Adora was able to fall asleep. 

But Catra isn’t with her. For all that Adora knows, she may never see Catra again. Even if she _does_ , she doubts that they will be meeting as friends. As hard as it is for her to accept, there is a very high chance that she will never share a bed with Catra again, will never whisper with her into the night, never blink her eyes open in the morning to see Catra fast asleep, holding onto her like a life preserver. 

Sudden tears prick at the corners of her eyes, and she rubs at them angrily before she sits up and adds another pillow to the pile at the end of the bed, stacked on top of her feet. 

Even despite the thick blanket and the wobbling stack of pillows, even though she keeps rubbing them together, her feet are _still_ cold. 

She suspects that she’s just going to have to get used to that. 

****

**now.**

Kyle, Lonnie and Rogelio all passed out hours ago, but Catra has yet to follow them into the embrace of sleep. 

Instead, she’s spent that time trying her best to find a comfortable spot. Her own cot is unfamiliar to her – she’s spent so few nights in it that she doesn’t know how to find the most comfortable spot, how to best position herself so that a weird bump in the canvas doesn’t dig into her spine. It doesn’t seem to matter whether she’s on her back or her stomach or curled up on her side – no matter how she lies, _something_ isn’t comfortable. Her latest attempt at finding a good position had worked out for about thirty seconds before something started digging into the small of her back, and she had flipped over onto her side with a loud growl. 

The only issue now that she’s on her side is that she finds herself looking at Adora’s cot. Her few possessions are still tucked into the lockbox shoved underneath, and her blanket is pulled across the mattress tight enough to bounce a screw off of. If Catra had any screws, she might try to do just that, although it would be a mere precursor to what she actually wants to do. She wants to dig her claws into Adora’s mattress, wants to shred it into tiny pieces of fluff and fabric. She wants to tip the cot over, jump up and down on the metal frame until it’s bent and dinged and barely recognizable as a bed. She wants to _destroy it_. 

But she doesn’t do that. Instead, she turns onto her back, so that she’s staring at the bottom of the empty bunk above her, resting heavily on one hip so that her tail doesn’t get squished underneath her. Even then, she’s uncomfortable almost immediately, but she doesn’t move again. She forces herself to push through the discomfort, to try and ignore it. 

As hard as she tries, it immediately becomes apparent that she isn’t going to be comfortable like this either. With another growl of absolute frustration, she flips back onto her side (facing away from Adora’s bed this time), curls into a small ball, and tears her pillow out from underneath her head. Placing it at her side and resting one hand on top of it, she scoots down the bed, until she wouldn’t have enough room to straighten out even if she wanted to. The position immediately feels more _right_. It feels familiar. 

Even as she allows herself to get comfortable, curling her fingers tighter into the fabric of the pillow, she hates herself for what she’s doing. She hates that she’s become so dependent on Adora that she can’t sleep without her. She hates that, rather than ignoring her pain or forcing it to the back of her mind, she finds herself literally clinging to a crude façade of Adora. She should be stronger than this. She _is_ stronger than this. 

But still, the knowledge that she has to be better than this, especially if she’s going to live up to the title of Horde Captain, doesn’t stop her from stretching across the space between her bunk and Adora’s. It doesn’t stop her from seizing the pillow that was formerly Adora’s and placing it above the pillow that she is using to represent Adora’s leg, so that it approximates the position of where Adora would be if they were still sharing a bed. 

As soon as she curls back up, the wave of exhaustion that has been hanging over her for hours falls, and she finds herself drifting off, the flame of anger still alive and well in the back of her mind. 

When she comes to, Adora’s bed is still empty. The room is quiet, and even though Catra’s pillows are still where she placed them when she fell asleep, in the light of the day, they don’t provide her with any comfort. If anything, they only make that flame of anger grow more powerful, and she shoves both pillows off the bed, scoring her claws through the one she clung to through the night and releasing a burst of fluff into the air. 

When she looks up, Kyle is staring at her from his bunk, fist raised halfway to his face, as if he was about to rub at his eyes. Thankfully, Lonnie and Rogelio appear to still be asleep, but that fact doesn’t do much to diminish the embarrassment that floods through Catra as she realizes that she’s been seen.

“What the hell are you looking at?” she hisses, extending her claws in Kyle’s direction. In response, his pale face flushes pink, and he drops back onto his mattress and turns his back on Catra. Catra hisses at him again before she turns over and glowers at Adora’s empty bed. 

Regardless of whether or not Adora comes back, Catra is never going to forgive her for this. 

****

**then.**

“Adora, come to bed,” Catra says, her voice muffled by the blanket that she has drawn up to cover her face from the nose down. The heating in their particular section of the building is on the fritz, and even despite her warmer body temperature, Catra is cold. On the other side of the room, Lonnie and Kyle have wiggled their way into Rogelio’s bunk, using their own body heat to keep him warm, and Catra is pointedly trying not to notice them. She doesn’t understand the dynamic between the three of them, but she knows that paying attention to them in a moment like this is going to make _all_ of them feel awkward, so after taking a quick glance over her shoulder to see if they’re still awake (it’s hard to tell, since they’ve pulled blankets over their heads), she turns back to Adora. She’s doing a handstand against the wall, arms quivering underneath her, form starting to falter. 

It’s a nice view, Catra is willing to admit - Adora is wearing a tank top that shows off the curves and swells of her arms and, where it’s bunched up around her waist, the small of her back. But she’s _cold_ damn it. 

“Just a little longer,” Adora mutters, the words as unsteady as the rest of her. “Just want to beat my record.” 

Catra rolls her eyes – Adora’s record is impressive, but she’s only competing with herself at this point. The others in their group don’t stand a chance, and Catra doesn’t care enough to try and challenge her for the title. 

What she _does_ care about is that she’s slowly but surely freezing, so she extends her hands out from underneath the blanket long enough to grab Adora’s pillow and toss it at her. It hits her in the back, and while it’s not a heavy blow, it’s enough to throw off her balance, and her feet fall away from the wall. She lands in a neat crouch on the floor, glowering at Catra. 

“I was _ten seconds_ away,” she says, pooching out her bottom lip. Catra rolls her eyes again. 

“And I’m sure you can beat that record tomorrow. C’mon, aren’t you cold?” 

“It’s not that bad in here,” Adora answers, which is such an obvious lie, but Catra doesn’t bother to push any further. Instead, she pulls back the blanket and slides over so that Adora has enough room to join her. 

“It’s only going to get worse. Get. In.” 

“Aye, aye, captain,” Adora replies with a haphazard salute before she presses a switch on the wall, turning off the dim light set into the ceiling above them. She takes the time to take her shoes off and readjust her pillow on the bed before she _finally_ crawls in beside Catra, pulling the blanket tight around the two of them. The difference in the temperature is immediately obvious, and a purr of contentment rolls from Catra’s chest as she presses herself up against Adora’s warm (and thankfully not sweaty) back, tucking her knees into the bend of Adora’s. 

“Better now?” Adora asks. When Catra nods, the tip of her nose drags against Adora’s back, and while she knows that she won’t be able to sleep like this, not without sacrificing her ability to breathe, she’s more than happy to stay here until she’s fully warmed up, more than happy to let their body heat mingle in the lack of space between them. 

“Would have been better if you were here fifteen minutes ago, but sure, this is fine,” Catra mutters. Adora says something in return, but it’s too muffled to hear. What Catra _feels_ is Adora reaching down and tangling their fingers together, effectively securing Catra’s arm around her waist. The next words that Adora says are easier to understand – they’re words that she says almost every night. 

“Goodnight, Catra.” 

Catra pulls her head away from Adora’s back, just far enough to gain some breathing room, closes her eyes and, in a sleepy voice, responds in kind. 

“Goodnight, Adora.”

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
